At the height of the melee and the rev­el­ry that is T&T Car­ni­val, it is easy to lose sight of the vast ma­chin­ery of di­verse skills and ser­vices be­hind the fes­tiv­i­ties.

Many mov­ing parts op­er­ate at a hec­tic pace over the weeks of fetes, con­certs, boat cruis­es and com­pe­ti­tions in the build-up to the five days from Car­ni­val Fri­day to Tues­day when the Mer­ry Monarch reigns.

Main­tain­ing the mo­men­tum re­quires the ef­forts and ex­per­tise of thou­sands of peo­ple be­hind the scenes, dri­ving an in­dus­try where on­ly a se­lect few can claim the biggest re­wards.

All the at­ten­tion over the past few weeks has been on the pan­nists, arrangers, ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, so­ca artistes, com­posers and front­line mas­quer­aders vy­ing to be crowned the cham­pi­ons of Car­ni­val 2023.

This year, when these twin is­lands made a re­turn to stag­ing the Caribbean’s biggest pre-Lenten fes­ti­val af­ter a two-year COVID-in­duced lull, will be de­fined by the com­peti­tors who have claimed those top ho­n­ours.

The sea­son’s defin­ing mo­ments in­clude the crown­ing of 20-year-old Ta’zyah O’Con­nor as Ca­lyp­so Monarch. He and his fa­ther Du­ane O’Con­nor, who won in 2012, and are the now first fa­ther and son to earn this dis­tinc­tion.

It was al­so a fam­i­ly af­fair in the Road March race, where Bun­ji Gar­lin won his first so­lo ti­tle in a com­pe­ti­tion pre­vi­ous­ly won by his wife, Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez and fa­ther-in-law Austin "Su­perBlue" Lyons.

Top mas ho­n­ours were claimed by Car­ni­val King Ray­mond Mark with his por­tray­al of The Feath­ered Ser­pent Crea­ture and Car­ni­val Queen Priya Na­gas­sar in The Moth­er of All Car­ni­vals. Still bask­ing in their Panora­ma glo­ry are BP Rene­gades, Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra and Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors.

But there are oth­er cham­pi­ons of T&T’s biggest cul­tur­al ex­trav­a­gan­za who gave their time and en­er­gy for the com­fort and safe­ty of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of rev­ellers and spec­ta­tors who filled the main venues. Most of them are not di­rect­ly in­volved in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try and were hard­ly even no­ticed as they put in the hard work.

Too nu­mer­ous to be list­ed in this lim­it­ed space, they con­tributed to the suc­cess of Car­ni­val 2023.

Among them are the of­fi­cers in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force, and Fire and Prison Ser­vices, who en­sured that cit­i­zens were able to play en­gage in all the rev­el­ry in safe­ty.

Work­ing in tan­dem, these agen­cies main­tained an ef­fec­tive safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket for the du­ra­tion of the cel­e­bra­tions.

This can count as the first big suc­cess for new­ly in­stalled Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, who has al­ready com­mend­ed the of­fi­cers in­volved in this na­tion­wide op­er­a­tion for their ded­i­ca­tion and hard work.

Al­so to be ap­plaud­ed are the CEPEP crews and Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion work­ers who kept the cities and their en­vi­rons clean through­out the fes­tiv­i­ties.

As mas­quer­aders danced through the streets on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, CEPEP work­ers kept busy clear­ing away the lit­ter they left be­hind.

Clean-up crews shift­ed in­to high gear as soon as Las Lap end­ed at mid­night on Car­ni­val Tues­day, en­sur­ing there were no un­sight­ly mas rem­nants when Ash Wednes­day dawned.

As the cur­tains come down on Car­ni­val 2023, give these un­crowned cham­pi­ons the ap­plause they de­serve.